AI is the best thing to happen to Academicians,

Let me explain through a tale:

In the beginning, was the word, and humanity’s advancements can be read in a way of trying to control this word; technology was developed to fix the word in writing, upon which the word could be applied everywhere as law. Words did things. For a brief era, numbers took over, 1s and 0s, the new language of a new device, it was only people with a very high set of technical expertise that could interact with these newly found species that were born out of the mixture of the elements of the universe, living yet soulless, thinking yet language-less. Yet, some of us talked to these beings through the sharp-edged shapes of numbers; it was either a 1 or a 0, nothing in between. If the greatest triumph of the previous century was discovering and trying to establish communication with this language-less beings, calculators, computers and machines, then the beginning of this century, the times we are living through, will be written down, in word as the time the computers learnt English, or Arabic, or any other word and responded to us back in words. The war between words and numbers is the tale of yesteryears. We are back to the realm of words, and as academicians, in Eminem’s words:

Now, before we give ourselves a pat on our backs and become too proud of ourselves amidst our cerebral indulgences, we must show humility and understand that in our pursuit of knowledge, especially textual, most of has ignored the part on learning technology beyond the ubiquitous needs of everyday life. This is important because, now you have the language to command the computer, but if you are not aware of how it works and how much it can do, then you are not a good practitioner of adab. Adab is about recognition, which means recognising our tools' capabilities and the already available products in the market. I have written briefly about Adab in general and Adab in Technology, do take a look to understand the philosophical bases that are necessary to cultivate a long-lasting habit.

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How to be a Good Human to your AI

Now the following are a few basic understandings derived out of my own experiences with AI as an Adabi academician:

1. As a general rule, OPEN UP YOUR HEART TO AI: No, really, AI needs as much data as available to serve you properly. When requesting something from your AI, give it as much information as possible. Tell them that you are a PhD scholar in Cultural Studies at EFLU (I am), and as is the case with most AI models, they will remember, so building a rapport with your AI model will go a long way in getting the best results.

2. When requesting specific stuff, BE VERY CAREFUL WITH YOUR WORDS: remember when you were texting your significant other on WhatsApp and they misread your tone? Well, a very similar thing happens with AI, if you don’t use the proper words, the AI might not properly understand your tone, and won’t give you the best or well-tailored results. Be careful with the words, as if you are writing a constitution for a country (shout out to Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar): be as specific as possible. Now this takes time, we need quick results, that’s where the first point comes in handy, if the AI knows you from your previous interactions, the best and smartest thing you could do is tell it in your honest words what you want and ask it to generate a prompt for you, yes, use the AI to use the AI. The differences will amaze you. For example:

   1. Here’s what I gave Chat GPT: I need to develop a syllabus on deleuze with reference to university syllabuses, I am a PhD student in cultural studies, generate a prompt that will give me the best results when I enter it to Chat GPT.
      
      Here’s the reply: Great — here’s a prompt you can give me to get the most helpful, tailored results for developing your Deleuze syllabus:

      Prompt to ChatGPT:

      "I'm a PhD student in Cultural Studies designing a university-level syllabus on Gilles Deleuze. I want a 12–14 week course structure that reflects how Deleuze is taught in Cultural Studies, Critical Theory, or Literary Studies programs at global universities. Include key weekly themes, essential readings (both primary texts and key secondary sources), and suggestions for assignments or discussion topics. Please base this on actual university syllabi if possible."

   
   How this helps us is that it shows us how we should give it a command, and now we can edit our prompt according to our needs and even add more details if necessary.

3. Give your AI the benefit of Doubt: AIs, as good as they are, they also go through this state called Hallucination, and I get it, I too would hallucinate if I had to study gazillions of data and then answer to the person in front of you about a weird mole on their back. So, always ask and check for sources, and if you’re unsure about something, google it.

4. No two AIs are the same: Like how you wouldn’t expect your carpenter to be a good expert on nuclear physics, don’t expect all AIs to be equally good at things. Some are good at combing data, some at giving news, some for general queries and some for image generation. I will list out some of the tools I have used and found useful as an academic.

5. AI is moving fast, try to follow, if not keep up: This is self explanatory, and something I had explained in the Adab of technology, developments in AI are happening by the millisecond, keep yourself in the loop, at least with things that are relevant to your field, as an academic, I would suggest following my brother Dr. Musthaq Bilal on twitter. He is the best out there at the moment for Academia and AI.

AI Tools I use at the moment as an Academician

1. Chat GPT

   1. Pros: Connected to the Internet, Best for general AI purposes, The best for Image Generation

   2. Cons: Not suitable for large data handling.

   3. Use Cases for me: General Searches, Generating Prompts for other AI tools, Image Generation

2. Perplexity AI

   1. Pros: Connected to the Internet, Best for source cited results

   2. Cons: Not suitable for general AI purposes like data management or other stuff

   3. Use Cases for me: The best tool out there for a proper Literature Review (has given me the best results, so much that I use it for my basic and sometimes advanced literature reviews atp)

3. Claude AI

   1. Pros: Very good at handling data, can read and handle CSV files, other data sheets etc better.

   2. Cons: Is not connected to the internet at the moment (rumours are that it will be soon) hence, doesn’t give good results in contemporary or academic searches.

   3. Use Cases for me: I use it to clean up my writing formats, organise my Kindle notes.

4. Notebook LLM

   1. Pros: You can upload as many sources as you want as documents and it will answer your questions from those sources with proper citations. Will create notes for you out of your material.

   2. Cons: Not made for general queries.

   3. Use Cases for me: Revisiting an old book for a quotation, I can add it to the LLM and it will give me exactly what I am referring to. Also good for Assignments if you were supposed to submit it yesterday.

Be Adabi, get it, Adab and AI? Okay, I ‘ll go.

Wallahu A’lam and Allah Knows Best.